I can’t really write about Neptune without getting into some of her more subtle aspects and connect the dots from the urge to connect…to loss of ego…to dreams…to inspiration. Certainly there are overarching trends that affect all of us as Neptune continues its passage through Aquarius and we will continue to explore them in the coming posts. But there is an inner aspect to Neptune that I feel is also critical for any business person to master and there are particular ways this energy is making itself felt during these times.

My inspiration for this post came from thinking about the sign Aquarius and its connection to the realm of mind and ideas. I’ve also been rereading Julia Cameron’s Finding Water, the third book of her Artist’s Way trilogy. Julia’s advice includes what she refers to as Morning Pages, three pages of long-hand writing you do first thing in the morning. Strictly stream-of-consciousness, mind to paper without stopping or censoring.

I think of this kind of writing as opening a direct channel from Neptune. In this kind of writing I am absolutely freed from my ego because no one will ever read my thoughts. While Julia encourages each of us to write whatever we feel, no matter how petty or trivial, I notice that very quickly I tune into another channel, one full of new thoughts, good ideas, and unexpected wisdom. The inspiration channel – better than TV!

For example, through this channel I designed an alternate way to present astrology charts to clients using a large surface, images representing the signs, and objects representing the planets. Very visual, colorful, it gives a direct intuitive experience instead of a flat, two dimensional one. This is not how I usually think – I am generally very linear and diagrammatic. But when I open to the Neptune channel, in pours color, art, design.

I have used the Neptune channel for client financial issues, and for large accounting design projects. There is brilliance in this universe that is not a product of my usual left-brain focus and it is generous. In fact, the more I can allow the realm of my rational mind to open to the waves of the Neptune energy, the more inspired I am in my work and the better ideas I have for my business. And then I feel I am part of a larger whole and that there is a place for me in the collective.

It’s such an interesting time with Neptune transitting Aquarius because the non-rational (Neptune; right brain) is pouring into the earth through the rational (Aquarius; left brain). The realm of thought and ideas has become today’s conduit for the creative. Expect to be inspired. Whether you feel stuck in your business or career, or you’re ready for something new, find a way to open to the energy of Neptune in Aquarius. Some suggestions for luring the inspiration of Neptune in Aquarius:

Walk by the sea or any body of water with pen and paper or a digital recorder. Look at the sky, look at the birds, the clouds, the water. See colors and shapes. As my acupuncturist tells me, Don’t think! When inspiration strikes, record it.

Make some sacrifice for your community. This could be as simple as volunteering in the community garden to proofreading for Digital Proofreaders. Sacrifice is particularly dear to Neptune and Aquarius rules community and the distribution of knowledge to all.

Record your dreams and learn dream interpretation techniques. Dreams are one of the languages of Neptune and the effort to explore their meanings invites her wisdom. I have been studying with Judith Schafman, PHD (http://judithschafman.com/) and have recognized several business ideas in the symbols of my dreams.

Keep pen and paper by your bed and pay attention to early morning musings, just in the space between sleep and awake. This blog was a gem I found in that space.

Neptune is available to everyone at any time; she doesn’t hold back. She just needs an empty space to fill. Think of her as leaping over from your right brain into your left brain and finding a quiet space there to settle in and chat. She is an endless source of energy and inspiration, more than all of us put together can hold. We can all enjoy inspired minds while Neptune is in Aquarius.

This is a video of the beautiful, haunting Opus 32 movement “Neptune”. Gustav Holst composed The Planets Op. 32 between 1914 and 1916. The orchestral suite has seven movements, each of them named after a planet and its corresponding Roman deity. “Neptune” was the first orchestral piece of music to have a fade-out ending. Holst stipulates that the women’s choruses are “to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it is to be slowly and silently closed”, and that the final bar (scored for choruses alone) is “to be repeated until the sound is lost in the distance”. Although commonplace today, the effect bewitched audiences in the era before widespread recorded sound—after the initial 1918 run-through, Holst’s daughter Imogen remarked that the ending was “unforgettable, with its hidden chorus of women’s voices growing fainter and fainter… until the imagination knew no difference between sound and silence”. [Cite, Wikipedia] Please enjoy this “Neptune”.

How’s your mental telepathy? I read back on predictions by other astrologers pre-1998 for the period when Neptune would be passing through Aquarius. There were some who predicted that mind-to-mind telepathy would be a feature of this time; that man would develop the ability to communicate over vast distances through the mind alone. This was virtually accomplished through the internet and the various applications like Facebook, blogging, flickr, twittering, and many others . Second Life and similar environments have created spaces where we can meet with people we know from across the globe or meet and get to know others, attend events together, live and play in an electronic community that can become as real as your first life, depending on your definition of reality. In Aquarius, reality is an experience in the mind.

I’m not making a judgment here although I do tend to get excited by new ideas and directions. I’m encouraging all of us as businesspeople to recognize what is happening. Certainly there are many activities that are not conducted in this way, but the internet has captured the time and minds of many millions of people. If we are competing with the internet while Neptune is in Aquarius, we need to recognize it and be sure we are offering services and products that cannot be had for free in the internet medium. People used to use accountants to do their taxes; now they can be done for free on line. People used to use travel agents; now free on line. People used to use stockbrokers; free or almost free on line.

And the knowledge that is free and available on line is astounding. Need medical advice? Go online. Need lawn care advice? No longer do you run down to the hardware store. Want to try that new restaurant? Check it out online, where you trust the opinions of others because there are so many contributors that there is a leveling out, a consensus that can be achieved.

Neptune in Aquarius isn’t just about the internet. The urge is to blend by forming groups and communities. Of course there are many communities online from Geekdads to , yes, lawncare tips. But the urge is happening outside of the virtual world too. What do your employees and customers want under this influence?

People want to contribute to the whole

People want to form groups of like-minds

People want to connect to others

People want their ideas acknowledged

So what are we saying here? Recognize the impact of Neptune in Aquarius – people want to meet based on shared interests and are willing to meet purely through the realm of the mind. If your business is bricks and mortar, how can you use this trend? More on this in the coming posts, including another Neptune in Aquarius business concept – Free.

As I’m writing, my cat jumps up on my desk. I stop to pet her silky fur and she perches next to me. She loves paperwork and will always join me at my desk when I’m working. She likes to knock over cups full of pens and snuggle into the paper tray of my printer. Can I duplicate this online? No, and yet I’m not likely to try to make a business out of it, either.

I found a great quote by Mikal Gilmore in the Rolling Stone Commemorative Issue on Michael Jackson. Although he wasn’t describing Neptune, these words are particularly descriptive of Neptune’s energy:

In my mind, Michael Jackson, [Elvis] Presley and the Beatles all shared one virtue: they bound together millions of dissimilar people in not just a quirk of shared taste, but also a forceful, heartfelt consensus that spoke to common dreams and values.”

This is a perfect quote for the activity of Neptune: a forceful, heartfelt consensus that speaks to common dreams and values. (To see my post on Neptune, use this link Neptune/) Neptune has been transiting the sign of Aquarius (Aquarius/) since 1998. What are the common dreams and values that are inspiring us with Neptune in Aquarius?

The Aquarius common dreams and values are

the equality of the common man;

responsibility to the group;

the ascendancy of man based on knowledge, rather than other types of power;

the right of humans to progress technologically;

the right of each person to contribute to the base of knowledge.

Neptune in Aquarius – connecting, binding together through the dissemination of knowledge and information. Aquarius is an air sign, so it’s through the realm of thinking and ideas that the Neptunian urge to merge takes root in the world.

What does this search for connection look like? Think of internet dating. This hugely popular and successful way to connect to other people is done entirely through databases of attributes – bits of knowledge about other people matched electronically with bits of knowledge about you. Mind to mind connection. The bits of knowledge may be about your likes and dislikes, your beliefs, what makes you smile, how you feel, all little pieces of information that you choose to key into the screen – effectively turning your need for connection into bits of information. No physical contact, no physical environment for meeting and yet thousands of successful matches.

How else do we search for connection these days? Facebook has become a phenomenon during Neptune’s transit of Aquarius, becoming more and more ubiquitous every day. It has become unnecessary for any physical contact to keep up with friends and family and in fact this electronic connection has allowed more contact with a wider group than ever before. No need even for telephones to transmit our personalities, we can just reach out and touch each other virtually. And it really does feel like connection, more connection than ever.

Blogging is also a very Neptune in Aquarius activity. The right of the common person to contribute to a base of shared knowledge across countries and cultures is a trend that has never been seen on this scale. And twittering, blogging in fewer than 140 characters, is changing and some would say redefining our communication skills to match the lighting pace of our world. The right to change centuries of grammar and punctuation rules with the abbreviations and short bursts required for text messaging is a purely Aquarian liberty. Revolutionize! Break the rules!

I’m interested in hearing from you. How are you including these trends in your business plans? In the comments section below, let’s begin sharing ideas about aligning with Neptune in Aquarius, a very Neptune in Aquarius thing to do!

In the post and video on Neptune we examined some of the fundamental characteristics of the energy of the planet, Neptune. To recap:

The urge toward unity and dissolution of separation between individuals, organizations, and for some, divinity.

The search for underlying cohesive principles of reality, such as physics and mathematics.

Sacrifice of individuality in service to a higher goal

Compassionate support of other people’s aims

Imagination, dreams, inspiration, art, creativity

Interconnectedness, such as ecological systems

Aquarius pours water from a jar into the mouth of the southern fish, as depicted in Urania's Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London c.1825. (Source:Wikipedia)

Since 1998 Neptune has been transiting the zodiac sign of Aquarius. Before we look at this configuration, let’s spend some time looking at the sign Aquarius. Aquarius is also called the water bearer, and is symbolized by an angel pouring water onto the earth. But the water the angel pours is not liquid; it is the water of knowledge.

The Greek myth related to Aquarius is the myth of Prometheus, known as the first rebel. Prometheus had been given a mission by Zeus to inhabit the world with living creatures. After creating all the other creatures, Prometheus fashioned a being made to resemble the gods themselves. And as a gift, he taught his favorite creatures astronomy, mathematics, the alphabet, how to cure diseases, and the art of divination. Defying Zeus’ orders, he stole a spark from the sun, fire, and gave it to humans, fire to warm their homes and become the seed of civilization. From this myth, we see the rebelliousness of the Aquarian temperament as well as the desire to uplift the disadvantaged and establish them as equal to the gods.

In astrology, Aquarius is known as an air sign. Air signs are concerned with the mind and intellect rather than emotions (water signs), spirit (fire signs), or the physical world (earth signs). The glyph for Aquarius is the lightning bolt, signifying flashes of insight and brilliance. Airwaves and electrical systems come naturally under the influence of this sign and also technological revolutions, such as the industrial revolution in the late 18th and early 19th century and the digital revolution in our time. The sign is also associated with revolutionary ideas, such as liberty, democracy, anarchy, and socialism that topple traditional institutions and is also concerned with the nature of one’s responsibility and contribution to the group. Aquarius includes an egalitarian vision, where each person is created equal to every other, and can make an equally valid contribution to the whole.

Aquarius Glyph

Some current examples of the Aquarian spirit operating in the world:

Craigslist which by providing a free or almost free classified ad environment on the internet effectively demonetized newspaper classified ad revenue, resulting in the demise of hundreds of newspapers and causing a huge transfer of wealth from large corporations to individuals.

E-Bay which has become an extreme form of decentralized sales, where millions of items are listed, bought, and sold daily.

Google AdWords, whereby advertisers bid for the right to place ads next to Google searches. Quoting a recent article in WIRED Magazine, “By turning over its sales process entirely to an auction-based system, [Google] removed human guesswork from the equation [of what ads would sell given a related query].” Note, “removing human guesswork” means taking emotions out of the equation and basing business decisions on engineering, mathematical formulas, and data mining.

Free, or very low cost, access to knowledge and information over the internet. Of course, there are prior examples of this in history, such as libraries, schools, and museums.

Wikipedia, the free, open content online encyclopedia created through the collaborative effort of a community of users.

Open source software which generally allows anyone to create modifications of the software, port it to new operating systems and processor architectures, share it with others, or market it.

No doubt you can think of many more. We are living amidst a huge renaissance of the Aquarian spirit, supported by Neptune’s transit through the sign. I’ll spend the next few posts examining this trend and exploring how to align with it in our business lives.

Hi, everyone. Did you see the Neptune video? This week we’re going to start talking about Neptune.

There are three major cycles that astrologers track that can impact our businesses in a big way over the long term. We’ve spent some time discussing Pluto and its travels through the sign of Capricorn, which began in 2008 and will continue until 2024. While Pluto is an energy that is far beyond our ability to control, it is nonetheless not unfamiliar. The energy of birth, regeneration, upheaval, death, and eventual rebirth is familiar ground to all of us living on this planet.

The next major cycle we’re going to discuss is the cycle of Neptune. Neptune’s revolution around the sun takes 168 years; it is 30 times farther from the sun than the earth is. In astrology, the outer planets carry a transcendent energy and Neptune’s energy is a little hard to get a hold of for most people, and may be even harder for most business people. It represents a part of human experience that is subtle and anti-ego and so its waves of energy go unnoticed even though it is operating all the time. It is the part of us that yearns to be part of a larger whole, yearns for unity. It is easily seen in the realm of fashion, when a certain style, like blue jeans, sweeps throughout an entire culture or at a sports event when the entire crowd becomes one cheering entity.

I was thinking about this Neptune energy the other day as I was driving. Driving on a busy highway is a very Neptunian activity. The whole notion of driving with thousands of others in single lines on narrow paths, merging, swerving, changing lanes, coordinating speeds and timing, is the very epitome of Neptune energy. Everyone is watching out for everyone else, not in the sense of personal caring, but in the sense of noticing and staying aware of everyone else’s movement through space. Your awareness becomes much larger than just you in your vehicle; in fact your awareness often leaves your own individual locus and critically connects to all of the cars in your line of sight. And as long as you keep your eye on your portion of the road, and everyone else keeps their eye on their portion of the road, an incredible choreography happens.

And this experience is a matter of life and death. At these speeds in these metal machines, you absolutely put yourself into the hands of your fellow beings. It seems almost miraculous that all these separate people with separate purposes can coordinate their activities so thoroughly that we all live through the experience. Neptune in motion: the power to subsume our individuality in order to accomplish something as a whole. Really it’s a beautiful thing: to accomplish our aim of getting where we are going we must support everyone else’s aim of reaching their destination too. Where selfishness becomes selflessness – the Neptune point.

How does this energy apply to success in business? How can we, as businesspeople, align ourselves with it? And what are the signs of Neptune in Aquarius, where it has been travelling for some time? We’ll talk about these things in this series on Neptune.

About Ellen Longo

Ellen Longo

Welcome, everyone: old friends, clients, new friends, those of you I’ve met, those I’ll meet through these pages. Welcome to a long-term, mutually beneficial conversation about the wisdom of astrology as it pertains to the success and profitability of your business.

Whether you are in the start-up phase, are currently running a successful business, or planning a change, alignment with the natural cycles of the planets can inform your path.--> More

Read about Ellen’s Excellent Adventure

This is the story of how I arrived at the point of writing a blog about the intersection of business and astrology.